


Nocturne in Grey and Gold

by ignipes



Category: House M.D.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-09
Updated: 2005-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A piano, a motorbike, a river, a few telephone calls, fifty cents gone for good, and one late-night conversation about the lies our forefathers told us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nocturne in Grey and Gold

The telephone rings, but House ignores it.

When it rings again he plays louder. The volume is all wrong for this piece, too assertive, but hunched over the piano he hits the keys strongly and precisely. It's only a matter of time before he wakes Mrs. Carter next door, but she won't complain, even though it's nearly midnight. Mrs. Carter may have blue hair, an entire wardrobe of chartreuse nylon tracksuits, and a strong odor of Bengay, but she does know the difference between Chopin and Grand Theft Auto well enough to complain only about the latter.

Not that it makes any difference to House. When she bangs on the wall with her broom, he just bangs back with his cane, and they both continue doing what they were doing. The secret of maintaining bearable neighborly relations is mutual dents in the plaster and paint flakes on the carpet.

After several rings, the answering machine kicks in. "I'm not here. Leave a message."

The beep coincides with a sharp C; the combined sound is harsh and discordant. A pause, then the warm voice: "Greg, it's Mom."

His hands still.

"I know you're not asleep, honey. It's too early for you."

With his left hand he picks out a few notes, low and slow and random.

"I was calling to ask you about your plans for Christmas. We'd love to have you home. I know you're busy, but..."

House smirks and plays the first few notes of the _Jaws_ theme.

"Well." His mother sighs. "Give me a call when you get a chance. I love you, darling."

There is a click as she hangs up. House begins to play again, but after a few moments he shakes his head and gives up. The rhythm of the nocturne is gone. He spins around on the bench, stands up and limps over to the sofa. Steve McQueen is asleep in his cage, half-buried under the shredded remains of yesterday's sports page. House kicks the coffee table with his good leg as he slumps into the sofa, and the rat wakes, glaring at him with beady black eyes.

"If I'm awake, you're awake, " House says. "If you don't like it, you can move out and pay your own rent."

He turns on the television and begins flipping through the channels rapidly, barely pausing for a few seconds at each. Crap, crap, crap, more crap. He finally stops on a _Law &amp; Order_ rerun, one of the old ones, and tosses the remote aside.

Just as Detective Briscoe makes his usual quip about the usual body, the phone rings again.

House looks at Steve McQueen. "We're popular tonight," he says.

Steve's nose twitches, but he wisely keeps his opinion to himself.

The machine picks up. "I'm not here. Leave a message."

There is a beep, a beat, a breath, a click, and silence.

House stares at the answering machine for a full minute. Then he makes a face and turns away. The visage of the mysterious caller is not going to miraculously materialize in the air above the phone. And that, House decides, is definitely a good thing. Miracles of the non-medical variety are inconvenient; pilgrims are even worse than patients.

On the television, somebody is being arrested in a scramble of shouting and police brutality. House decides he isn't interested and pushes himself to his feet again. Jacket, cane, keys, helmet, bottle of pills in the pocket, and he's out the door. In the light of the streetlamps he can see his breath clouding before him. There is still snow on the ground from the last storm, but the roads are clear. He doesn't lower the visor of the helmet, and the cold air stings his face.

Slowly at first, he drives through the quiet streets. This time on a weeknight, there aren't many people out, and the cars on the road seem to be sluggish, creeping along, coasting listlessly around corners and vanishing into side streets and garages. The usual darkness of the residential neighborhoods is disrupted by Christmas lights lining eaves and wrapped around trees: red and green and white, blinking and flashing, accompanied by cheap nativity scenes and motorized wire reindeer, wreaths on mailboxes, snow shovels leaning against walls, sensible cars waiting in driveways. The houses are all dark, lit at most by that single living room light people always leave on to assuage their own insecurities.

He wonders if the people in these houses, asleep in their beds, Christmas lights flashing through their windows, actually believe the preposterous image they show the world. He didn't think anybody bought into the delusion of quaint suburban domesticity anymore, but there's a glowing plastic Santa Claus grinning at him evilly from the rooftop of a beige split-level, and he knows there's no end to the lies people will tell themselves. Especially at Christmas.

House scowls and accelerates. At first he heads toward Trenton, but the traffic increases and driving through the city annoys him, so he swings north and winds along the outskirts where the farmland meets the city. He follows the turns and back roads to the state park almost without thinking about it, remembering this roundabout route from a careless autumn day years ago, so long past that he tells himself he doesn't even recall who he was with.

The park is empty and mostly dark. A small voice in his mind suggests that it's probably illegal to be here at this hour; he avoids the lights around the buildings and parks as close as he can to the river.

He walks slowly, carefully, along the river, trying to avoid the remnant snow on the dirt trail. The wind is stronger by the river, and his nose begins to run in the cold. In the shadows of some barren trees, he accidentally places the cane on a patch of ice, and it skitters away from him. He flails briefly, waving his free arm to catch his balance, then stands stock-still for several seconds.

Well, he thinks, at least there is nobody there to see him come so close to falling on his ass.

When his heart stops racing, House turns toward the river and takes a few steps, carefully avoiding the ice. The water is dark, almost black, and specks of golden light glow on the opposite bank, imitating the stars hidden by the smog.

House reaches into his jacket pocket and finds a quarter. He runs his forefinger along the edge of the coin, then shifts his position, bracing his good leg and cane. He draws back and hurls the coin over the river. It flashes briefly in the darkness, then vanishes. He doesn't hear a splash.

"No fucking way," he mutters, and turns away.

House limps over to one of the benches along the trail, brushes the snow from the wooden planks, and sits down. For a few minutes he simply sits in the cold, tapping his cane against the packed dirt, trying not to shiver.

Then he reaches into his pocket for his phone and hits a few keys.

The voice that answers is thick with sleep. "Hello?"

"He was a liar. A dirty, rotten, two-faced liar."

"House. It's after one in the morning."

Wilson sounds so weary that House almost feels guilty for waking him. Almost.

"A liar. Our country is founded on a lie. A well-crafted political lie."

"Goodness, American politicians lie? Quick, call CNN. The people deserve to know."

House smiles into the darkness. "He didn't cut down the cherry tree, because there was no fucking cherry tree to cut down. He didn't throw a stupid coin across the river, because the river is too fucking wide. He didn't--"

"Where are you?"

"He did cross the Delaware, I guess," House goes on, ignoring Wilson's question, "but he didn't do it striking a majestic pose against a golden backlight with a cadre of adoring soldiers at his feet."

"Are you committing art theft, House?"

"No. Not tonight." He sighs in mock disappointment.

"Good. If you were, I would advise you to find a better painting."

"Don't worry, the painting is safe. I don't even like it. All that weepy romanticism."

"Did George Washington break up with you? Is that was this is about?"

"Of course, being a bad painting doesn't excuse it from being a _lie_."

"I told you it would never work out. Never trust a man in a powdered wig, that's what I always say."

House shifts down on the bench, stretching his legs out and tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can warm his hands in his armpits. "I tried to throw a coin across the river. It's too fucking wide."

"It's also the wrong fucking river," Wilson points out. "The coin was the Potomac."

House's slight smile grows. "Doesn't change the fact that it was a lie."

"Yes." Wilson yawns. "Well, we'll petition the writers of history to make the appropriate changes in the morning."

A brief, comfortable silence. House imagines Wilson stretched out on his back, eyes closed, that hideous cat curled up on his bare chest. It's supposed to be Julie's cat; she's the one who brought it home from the Humane Society because she "felt sorry for it." But the creature, more a maniacal pygmy tiger than a proper housecat, developed an inexplicable, unwanted attachment to Wilson from day one and never looked back. House figures that's another thing Julie will never forgive Wilson for, when they finally get divorced. She'll get the house and the china and the Kitchen-Aid mixer; he'll get a mangy cat he doesn't even like.

House asks suddenly, "Why are you talking to me?"

"Uh...you called me, remember?"

"You're talking in your normal voice. Shouldn't you be whispering so you don't wake Julie?"

There is a pause. "How do you know I didn't get out of bed and leave the room when the phone rang?"

"How long have you been sleeping on the sofa?"

Another pause. House can almost hear the gears turning in Wilson's head, considering and discarding possible half-truths.

"Guest room," Wilson answers finally. He sounds strangely distant, as if the phone has slipped away from him. "A couple of weeks."

"Not even welcome in your own marriage bed?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I mean, it sucks for you -- or, I guess, it very much doesn't suck for you, not in that bed, anyway--"

"House. Don't."

"On the other hand, I guess it's a good thing you have so many other beds you can run to--"

Wilson hangs up.

For a moment, House does not move. Then he reaches up and shifts his head, letting the phone fall into his hand. He stares at the glowing face and imagines the guest room in Casa Wilson. The place is the epitome of suburban domestic tranquility: a bland modern deal, high ceilings and ostentatious windows, white walls and neutral carpet, silver appliances in the kitchen and brown leather furniture in the living room. House has stayed there more than once, nights he was too drunk or too lazy to drive back home after hanging out, and every time he woke up with a hangover made excruciatingly worse by the gleaming, blinding white walls. The guest room is white, too, with a yellow and blue quilt and about ten million pillows on the bed in all different shapes and sizes. Wilson has probably tossed all of the pillows onto the floor except for two. Even when he sleeps alone, he keeps the second pillow, and he always stays on one side of the bed.

House sets the phone on the bench and takes his pills from his pocket. He opens the bottle, takes one out, puts the bottle away. The phone stays silent. He tosses the Vicodin up and catches it in his mouth, then picks up the phone and keys down to Wilson's number again.

"What the hell do you want, House?"

"Did you call me earlier tonight?"

"What?"

"You. Call. Telephone. Me."

"No. Why would I call you?"

"Oh, I don't know. You were lonely, sad, in need of companionship..." House can almost hear Wilson deciding to hang up again -- a sharp intake of breath, barely audible -- so he switches tactics quickly. "Somebody called and didn't leave a message."

"How many times have I called you and not left a message?"

"If you haven't left messages, how would I know?"

Another sigh, but this one is almost amused. "It wasn't me."

House shrugs. "Okay."

"It...probably wasn't Stacy, either."

House closes his eyes briefly and thinks, you said it and I didn't. But what he says is: "You never know. I can't keep track of all the babes making booty calls to me. It could have been anyone."

"The possibilities are endless."

There's no mistaking it now; Wilson is laughing at him. House relaxes and switches the phone to the other hand. "Whoever she is," he says, blowing on his fingers to warm them up, "she'll just have to sleep alone tonight."

"If she's sleeping, I envy her."

"Am I keeping you from your beauty sleep, Jimmy?

"Terribly unreasonable of me, I know. It is only the middle of the night."

"I know you hate it when you have bags under your eyes in the morning."

"It's just that I'd rather be sleeping than listening to you. I have my priorities."

"Though the chicks do go for that tousled, rumpled, rolled-out-of-and-rolled-around-in-bed look."

"I'm going to hang up now."

"Hey, I have feelings, you know."

Wilson hangs up.

House snaps his phone shut. Thirty seconds later it rings.

"Miss me already?"

Wilson laughs. "You're buying me coffee in the morning." And he hangs up again.

Grinning crookedly, House slips his phone into his pocket. His hand brushes against another quarter, and he closes his fingers around it. Standing up, he walks over to the river again, giving the icy patch a wide berth. This time he doesn't brace himself or hesitate before he winds up and throws the coin.

He listens for it to hit the water, but he hears nothing.

"No fucking way," he says.

The words are carried away by the wind. He walks back along the river toward the bike.


End file.
